The Annual Apple ‘Back To School’ Promotion

Something for the learners & learned amongst us!

Apple have announced that to celebrate that magical time of year- the beginning of the school year- their annual Back To School promotion will be starting as soon as tomorrow.

The promotion offers students who purchase a Mac a $100 iTunes/App store gift voucher, and for those students who purchase an iPad or an iPhone, they will be offered a $50 gift voucher.

Sweet deal!

What’s sweeter? This promotion is added on top of the usual student discount of $200 off a new Mac.

To be eligible you must be a college student, parents buying for college students, teachers (including homeschool), school administrators & Staff.

Happy learning guys. Also, we apologize for calling the beginning of the school year magical.

Image courtesy of top10films.co.uk

iTunes Radio/ i wish they’d called it iRadio cos it’s easier to type

Yay! We really like this one.

iTunes radio is the Pandora-like radio streaming app we’ve all been anticipating from Apple, except it’s not standalone, it’s stuck inside iTunes. Which is actually a lot better, because it makes it easier for you to intertwine your own music and what you stream.

iTunes Radio provides a bunch of featured radio stations like ‘Summer songs’, around 200 genre based stations, as well as whatever songs/stations that are trending on twitter, and stations that your friends are listening to ( using Airdrop).

You can create your own station ( and share it with friends) based on genre, song name or artist. You can also start a station from a song in your own iTunes library.

When listening to a station, you can tell iTunes Radio to ‘play more like this’, ‘never play this song again’, or to add the song to your wish list. Like Pandora and Spotify, the app will learn from these actions and will intuitively play songs and artists more and more to your liking, whilst at the same time letting you discover new music.

You can look over your entire history on the app, as well as your wish list, giving you a super easy way to buy the songs you like from the store, straight into your itunes.

iTunes Radio is free, but it is supported by ads. If you are an iTunes Match subscriber than you get it free, with no ads.

Now, people have been freaking out a little bit since iTunes Radio was announced yesterday, saying RIP Pandora ( and Spotify and iHeart Radio etc) and other such way-ahead-of-yourselves-stuff, which we think is a little hasty. We love Pandora.

But here’s the thing. A yearly Ad-free subscription to Pandora is $36. A yearly subscription to iTunes Match, and hence ad-free iTunes Radio is $24.99. Some people will care about that $11 a year if the service and experience is comparable.We just don’t know that it is yet.

On the other hand, if you are like a lot of people and can just put up with ads, even if it’s the same damn one over and over and over again, then we can’t compare iTunes radio with any other radio streaming service yet, because the only hint to how many ads you’ll get is the word ‘occasional’.

One thing that Apple has over the other services is a whole other system built into some of the devices iTunes Radio will be used on. Siri wil be integrated into the service so that you can ask her to change the song, skip a song, ask who it’s by, ask her to play more songs like it, etc.

Apple promises first releases of new tracks and has apparently made deals with Universal, Warner and Sony in an effort to get access to a huge range of artists and songs. We can’t wait to try it, but until then, and maybe after, we still love you Pandora!

iTunes Radio is built into iTunes and will be available in the Fall with iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks across all devices, Apple TV and  iTunes on PC.

Image courtesy of Apple.

iOS 7 is coming!

Apple are looking to introduce and preview their new iOS Software update- iOS 7 at WWDC 2013 ( Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, June 10-14), with a view of releasing it in September this year.

The tech world is abuzz with rumours that this iOS update ( code named Innsbruck) will be significantly different- and improved – under the direction of new Human Interface Software team director Jonathon Ive.

Ive is also the Senior Vice President of Industrial Design for Apple and has been primarily responsible for Hardware Design since 1997, but since Scott Forstall, the previous Software interface Director for Apple, was fired in October last year Jony Ive is in charge of both Hardware and Software design. Interesting.

Scott Forstall was a lover of what is called Skeuomorphic Design- basically icons and apps that replicate the look of real life items.

In relation to Apple, that means examples like the faux leather stitching on the Notepad App, grainy wood in the Newstand App, and the Casino resemblance of the Games App. Steve Jobs was said to be similarly smitten by this design choice.

Jony Ive is not.

See? So not smitten.

Sources are coming out of the woodwork almost every day now with leaked information on exactly what Jony Ive has planned, and here’s the gist of what we’ll most likely be looking at :

*Very flat, sleek design, with completely new look icons, tabs and toolbars, whilst still retaining the intuitiveness Apple is acclaimed for.

*More ‘at glance’ information with possible pull across screens similar to the pull down notification center.

*Apple Maps and Siri car integration, where you can use Apple Maps and Siri through your vehicles built in display.

*The high possibility of gesture control

Ive has been encouraging collaboration between the hardware and software teams, where previously the two worked independently, and, after last years Maps PR debacle, he is making sure that each and every change is reviewed extensively.

This means, according to most sources, (and the folks over at d’uh town), that everyone over there at Apple are working overtime to get the software ready for previewing at WWDC June 10-14. These sources have also claimed that engineers for OS X 10.9 have been pulled to help in preparation for iOS 7.

This all sounds pretty impressive and exciting- changes that will improve the way we use and interact with our iPhones forever- but there is bound to be more updates and improvements that have been so far kept under wraps.

There have been claims that the iOS 7 testers are using their devices with films over the screens that prevent anyone else around them from seeing the screen.

So, we’re expecting big things Mr Ive! ( No Pressure. … Well, a little bit of pressure… 😉 )

What’s next for Apple?

2013 should bring some interesting moves from Apple, and these are already being rigorously debated by those who are in the position to do so, and those who aren’t.

As per usual with Apple, everything is a guessing game, and we are only at the mercy of the limited amount of information analysts pour through patent documents to discover or that which is leaked – purposefully or not.

Over the next couple of days we’ll be looking at and making predictions for everything coming up in the Apple world in 2013 – their release schedule, the possibility of new products, new updates to existing products, and how this will affect you, as a customer, and the industry as a whole.

There are people who say that after the very public lawsuit with Samsung, Apple (as well as other industry players) will be reticent to create anything unless it is completely new and revolutionary. In other words, we won’t see anything new released that might be seen to have been built on the technology of other products as that would only welcome more lawsuits, which is bad for not only the company but for the whole industry.

There are others that are adamant that this year, after an arguably lackluster year in 2012, Apple must impress the tech world and it’s fans with new products or surprising updates to current products if they want to stay relevant.

Who’s right?

We’re going to pick through all of the  predictions and rumors, educated guesses and outright optimistic hopes for Apple in 2013, and give you the best of all of it.  Stay tuned!!

Erase Your iPhone and Restore to Factory Settings

There are a few different reasons why you may want to restore your iPhone to its factory settings.  One of the main reasons would be if you were selling the iPhone.  If you are selling your iPhone it is a good idea to erase all of your data to ensure data security.  When you sell your iPhone to the iPhone Antidote (see here), we securely erase all of the data, but some other companies or other methods of selling your iPhone may not be as secure.

Follow the directions below to erase all of the data on your iPhone and restore it back to it’s factory settings.

First, turn your iPhone on and go to settings.

Next, go to General.

At the bottom of the General screen you should see an option for reset, click this.

Now click “Erase All Content and Settings”

This will erase everything on your iPhone and restore it back to it’s factory settings.

Thanks for reading!

How to Take a Screenshot on Your iPhone/iPod/iPad

Something most people tend to miss out on with their iDevices is the ability to take a screenshot. This can be really helpful in a variety of different situations. You can take pictures of your text messages, your call log, different websites you are on for later viewing and pretty much anything else you can think of.  It can also be a really helpful way to zoom in and crop pictures that may already be on your iDevice.

The gesture is quite simple to do, all you need to do is:

Press the Home (round button) and the Lock (top button) button at the same time.

Hope this helps someone!

How to Create a Backup of your iPhone

Although it is fairly easy to do, there are still a lot of people that would not entirely know how to create a backup of their iPhone.  Here is a quick guide in case you find yourself unsure of how to create a backup.

•  Plug your iPhone or iPod into your computer
• Load iTunes
• Find your iPhone or iPod on the left side under the Devices section of iTunes
• Right Click on your Device
• Click Backup

How to Put a Passcode on your iPhone

Are people always messing with your iPhone? Or do you just want to make sure your data is safe in case you iPhone gets lost or stolen?  Either way, there are several different situation that making having a passcode on your iPhone a good idea.

With the iPhone, you are able to create a 4 digit passcode to prevent people from getting into your phone’s data.  To do this is simple, and there are also several options you may not have known about including:

• The ability to have a complex multicharacter passcode

• The ability to erase all data after 10 failed passcode attempts

• The ability to require a passcode only after leaving the phone idle for a certain number of minutes.

Here is how you do it:

1)      In your iPhone, go to the “Settings” application

2)      Select “Passcode Lock”, it should be near the bottom of the screen.

3)      Select “Turn Passcode On”, it should be near the top of the screen.

4)      Enter in a 4 digit passcode, and then reenter it once more to confirm.

5)      Now you have a passcode on your iPhone!

In addition, you can add several options:

If you would like a complex password, combining both numbers and letters:

1)      Slide the “Simple Passcode” slider to say off.

2)      Enter in your old passcode

3)      Now you can enter any string of characters as your password.

If you would like your iPhone to only require a passcode after leaving it idle for a certain number of minutes:

1)      Select “Require Passcode: Immediately”

2)      Change to your preference of when you would like the passcode to be required, ranging from 1 minute to 4 hours.

And finally, if you would like your iPhone to erase all of its data in the case of 10 failed passcode attempts:

1)      Slide the “Erase Data” slider to say on.

2)      Confirm on the next page by clicking “Enable”

Be careful as in the case you were to forget your passcode and try 10 times, all of the data on your iPhone will be erased!  However, this can be particularly handy in case you were to get your iPhone lost or stolen and it had sensitive data on it.

And that’s how you put a passcode on your iPhone!